Wood girls are PCL Champs

PHILADELPHIA - Championships don't usually come easy. And sometimes, it takes an unlikely hero, to finally make it happen.

Taylor Kaminski, a sophomore at Archbishop Wood, was 0-for-5 from the field and scoreless for 31 minutes, 57 seconds of Monday night's Philadelphia Catholic League girls basketball championship game between Wood and Archbishop Carroll.

But it was Kaminski who took the pass on a backdoor cut to the basket, and it was Kaminski's bucket on a driving layup which gave the Vikings a 33-31 victory for the program's second PCL title and the first in 29 years.

"I just used my instincts," Kaminski said. "I just took it. I didn't even think about it. I just knew what had to be done. The clock was winding down. I had to take the shot.

"It feels great. I never thought I'd have this feeling."

It was the third time in three years and the fourth in five that Wood and Carroll have squared off at the Palestra. But this is the first time in that stretch that the Vikings (21-4) have ended up cutting down the nets.

"It does (mean a lot), because a lot of people say that the Catholic League is the best league around," senior point guard Christine Verrelle said. "So, to win it means a lot to us, especially since it's been a lot of years."

But nothing came easy for either team in an intense, defensive struggle. Wood's 13-8 lead in the second quarter, after a pair of 3-pointers off the bench from junior Lauren Nealon, was its largest of the game. Carroll's biggest advantage was 19-15 early in the third quarter. There were eight lead changes. Momentum shifted back and forth, and neither team was able to find any offensive rhythm.

"It's always like this," Verrelle said. "We know we're both very strong, defensive teams and for some reason, when it comes to both of us, we can never really run our offense the way we like."

After the Patriots (18-7), the state's No. 2-ranked Class AAAA team, looked a bit better in the third quarter, Wood went on a 7-2 run to start the fourth, keyed by 3-pointers from seniors Jenna Swope and Steph Keyes.

But the Vikings couldn't put it away, missing a couple open shots and going 0-for-3 on the foul line, and eventually, with 1:55 remaining, Carroll tied it at 31 on a pair of free throws by Jen Carney.

"They're so good. They're so deep," Vikings coach Jim Ricci said about Carroll. "We didn't help ourselves by missing foul shots, but it's just so hard to defend their stuff. To hold them to 31 points is amazing. Our kids play so hard. That's a great team on the other end."

At that point, Ricci made a calculated risk and decided to hold the ball and go for the win. In the course of the motion offense, the ball found its way to Kaminski and she delivered the shot which will go down in the Wood history books.

"We wanted Taylor out there," Ricci said. "We wanted Taylor on top. We were having problems with the first step. We decided that if we got Tori (Arnao) on the high post, we were going to get somebody backdoor on the weak side. We got it, and she put it right on her hands. I saw it go up and it was very surreal. You're kind of like, 'Please go in.' It was like in the movies."

Todd Thorpe can be reached at 215-345-3059 or tthorpe@phillyburbs.com Follow Todd on Twitter at twitter.com/toddrthorpe